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Ten years ago today, on March 19, 2003, the United States invaded Iraq. And what did we achieve? An Iranian-backed Shi’ite dictatorship is in power and the Shi’ite crescent on the map was completed. We handed a stable region from a Sunni dictator who was at war with Shi’ite Iran and blocked Iran from much of its aspirations. And we–via President Bush’s insistence on “democratically-elected” governments for barbarians–inspired barbaric savages to get elected throughout the Middle East, destabilizing the region forever. And in the course of all that, thousands of American men and women dead, tens of thousands more maimed, disfigured, and otherwise permanently injured and scarred, all in the name of handing Sunni-ruled Iraq to the even more dangerous Shi’ites. That’s not to mention the gazillions of dollars spent and wasted . . . for nothing.

They Died . . .

American Contractors Burnt to Death, Hung, and Mocked by Iraqi Muslims

To Hand Iraq Over to Them . . .

As anyone familiar with my work knows, I’m not anti-war. I’m not an isolationist. Exactly the opposite. I’m all for America asserting its power in the world when it’s in America’s interests. I initially supported the war in Iraq. But that’s because I thought we’d go in, replace an anti-American nutty dictator with a pro-American Shah-like dictator, and quickly get the hell out. That’s how it should have been done. That’s how you prosecute a war and win.

Instead, we insisted on letting the masses of followers of the ayatollahs who dominate Iraq elect supporters of the ayatollahs. And that’s what’s there now. Chaldeans–Catholic Iraqis–who lived in Iraq for thousands of years, even before there was Christianity, have been persecuted and disenfranchised, kidnapped and murdered, and otherwise driven out by those we installed into power in Iraq. They’ve fled mostly to the U.S., where we’ve had to take them in by the hundreds of thousands and provide government entitlements and job-training for them in an economy where eight out of every 100 Americans are already unemployed. Most have come to Michigan, where the unemployment rate is even higher. (If things were so good, so successful in Iraq after we went in, why did President Bush immediately begin admitting tens of thousands of Christian refugees for asylum in the U.S.?) The Kurds are also in a similarly precarious position, as are Sunni Muslims.

And I supported America going to war, not American soldiers risking their lives to pass out candy and build roads for those who hate us. Not American soldiers being forced to give up Playboy Magazine to appease Muslims and being told they must abide by Muslim etiquette. That’s not a war. It’s a damned losing effort before it even starts. And that’s always what it was. For that, you cannot blame Obama in the least. This was not his war. This rests squarely on the shoulders of George W. Bush, who acted tough but was a paper tiger more bent on pandering to the religion that murdered 3,000 Americans on U.S. soil on his watch. He pretended to fight “those who did it” overseas, but then allowed those who did it to continue to pour into our borders, and he bent over backward to appease their backward ways.

So the war in Iraq wasn’t just a waste of time, money, and–far more valuable–American lives. It was an irreparable destabilization of the world’s most dangerous region run by the world’s most dangerous religion. And Bush gave that religion a taste of blood for gaining power via democratic elections, something that he continues to support despite the consequences in Gaza, Lebanon, Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya and the possible or likely consequences in Syria, Bahrain, Jordan, and elsewhere in the region.

But we’d be better off today–as bad as they were–with Saddam Hussein and his evil spawn, Uday and Qusay, still in power. Yes, the devil we knew was much better than the replacement devil we installed with American blood. Instead, we have Shi’ites equally as bad or worse in power. They take their orders from Iran and they hate their liberator, America. Remember, these are the people whose revered ayatollahs tell Muslims they must marry off their daughters before their first period. They are the ones who, immediately upon taking power in Iraq, immediately restored the legality of the mut’a (Shi’ite pretextual “temporary marriages” for the purpose of Islamic-sanctioned rape and prostitution), long outlawed by Saddam Hussein. They are the founders of Hezbollah, which murdered hundreds of Americans an worked with Al-Qaeda to murder hundreds more.

So what did we gain from it? Not much. But we lost a whole lot. Before there were two enemies of ours who hated each other equally as much as they hated us. That kept ’em busy and created a stable bulwark against unrest. Now, we’ve handed control of contiguous countries to one enemy, Shi’ism and it’s revolution, giving it a green light to spread the Shi’ite Revolution around the region. Good luck with that. Some people say that Obama’s pull-out is the problem. Um, no, “liberated, democratic” savagely barbaric Muslims are the problem.

Ten years ago today, we began the creation of a satellite state for Iran and Hezbollah through the sacrifice of thousands of American blood and limbs.

Was it worth it?

Nope. Not even close.

Somewhere in hell, Saddam Hussein is having the last laugh. And Ayatollah Khomeini is in the same place, laughing along with him. They may be in hell. But we created a new hell for ourselves on earth.

And we not only paid through the nose for it, we’ll be paying for a long time to come.

80 Responses

[Debbie – But we’d be better off today–as bad as they were–with Saddam Hussein and his evil spawn, Uday and Qusay, still in power. Yes, the devil we knew was much better than the replacement devil we installed with American blood. Instead, we have Shi’ites equally as bad or worse in power.]

Everything Debbie says is correct. However that is all in the past and without a time machine nothing can be done about it now.

The real tragedy is that we haven’t learned and we will continue to make the same mistakes.

I was initially for the war because I was told that it was a “slam dunk” that there were WMDs in Iraq.

Now I know that it was a lie that my government told to me. We knew there we’re any WMDs in Iraq. We knew that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. George W. Bush’s administration lied and NO ONE has been held accountable.

We lost trillions of dollars and thousands of lives for absolutely nothing.

No Barry, for the millionth time, virtually every intelligence agency in the World thought that S.Hussein had WMDs, and there is a good chance that they did have them, and merely transported them over to Syria before the invasion. Please spare everyone the endless regurgitation of third grade level DNC propaganda. Thanks.

>>No Barry, for the millionth time, virtually every intelligence agency in the World thought that S.Hussein had WMDs, and there is a good chance that they did have them, and merely transported them over to Syria before the invasion.<<

I guess some people are still in denial. We wasted trillions of dollars and spent thousands of lies based on the lying testimony of one notoriously unreliable source named "Curveball."

Waynesworld, you are wrong. There were conflicting reports concerning WMDs. Our government hid those reports. WMDs were never the reason for invasion. I’m not sure what Bush knew, but his advisors did.

We have created far more enemies than we will ever realize. Those in Iraq that lost loved ones, neighbors and friends will have a long memory. When revenge is preached, these people will listen. We HAVE created a multitude that is a WMD.

I agree. It still gets the usual play that there were no wmd’s found. The fact that the labs and the storage containers, that held the stuff, were found. The fact that a bad guy walks into a bank with a note that claims the man has a gun is enough for everyone to take the man seriously. Same with S.H. He was beating the drum about it and everyone figured he was telling the truth. Problem with the whole modern era of war is “civilized” people want to fight shit to a draw. Check out how North and south Korea worked it out. Vietnam was not good for the south after we left. We just have to do what WINNERS have done through out history: Get rid of everyone of the enemy. Their families, everyone. That’s how you avoid future Koreas, Chinas, and all the idiots running around with grudges and bombs. It gave Truman nightmares, but he did the right thing.

There actually were wmds in Iraq and it was worth going in there for that. However, the rest of Debbie’s analysis is right on target. Jihad Watch’s Fitzgerald predicted this from the very beginning. The insanity and self destruction in the democratization of Iraq and the Arab Spring all empower our enemies and do nothing good for the world.

The appearance of Bush and Clinton together at the 9/11 memorial at the Islamic crescent in Pennsylvania where there was no mention of the Islamic attackers at all proves the total failure that these 2 were and hints at the totally self destructive path that America is now on.

I was initially also for the Iraq invasion, but on this date 12 years ago, I didn’t know a bloody thing about Islam or Jihad. Sobering, indeed.

If only the anti-war Left could express their disgust at GWB this way (chock full of background knowledge and truth) they would not be the dopey moonbats they are. That being said, many well meaning Conservatives are also clueless too (much to my chagrin). Now look at them. No anti-war rallies since GWB is gone, those dopey frauds. Such hypocrites and frauds!!!!

I am glad to know the word “mut’a”…I knew the concept (from this site) but didn’t know that Shi’ite name. What is the name for the Sunni version (I assume there is a Sunni version as I know Sunni Prince’s engage in a similar “temporary marriage” *spit* for the girls they procure and use, the disgusting perv frauds!)?

“…“liberated, democratic” savagely barbaric Muslims are the problem.”

Indeed. Wow. This is the site I learned this from. I know this now so I can follow the whole morass that goes with Islam without knowing every little detail (and there are HEAPS of details!!). I am thankful for this site and I know this now. Wow.

One accomplishment of the invasion was that Saddam was forced to send his chemical weapons to Syria, where (if you believe today’s headlines linked on Drudge) they are now being used against rebels backed by Hezbollah and Al Qaeda. Who would have thought?

After the first Gulf War with Bush Sr. I heard many times people complaining that “Bush didn’t finish the job.”
Meaning he didn’t kick Saddam out of power.|
I explained over and over again that getting rid of Saddam would only empower Iran because both are Shiite majority countries.
If a normal guy like me could see that, why then couldn’t the President of the USA with all of his high paid advisers see it?

Once again, like so many times through out history, a war has in fact made things worst not better.

What the saddest part of this whole thing is our military men that were killed or wounded not to make America safer, but went through the horrors they did and actually made things worst.
I don’t blame them. They were following orders, but it’s still sad to know your son died for not just nothing, but less than nothing.
A little incompetence at the top is a million times worst than massive incompetence at the bottom.

As I see it, the mistake we made was not in removing an evil regime it was in not removing the other evil regime in Iran along with it.

Since we didn’t do it, our last mistake was try to Westernize Islamic barbarians. Who have proceeded to kill each other after we pulled out of there. Is that our fault? No it isn’t and as I noted, I’m not too upset Iraq is a mess – better they kill each other than they kill us.

They do that fine without our help and having made a mess, we ought to stay out of it exactly like we should stay out of Syria today. We should pray hard the same thing happens in Iran. The entire world will be a lot safer when Muslim bloodlust doesn’t come in our direction.

In the end, G-d helps us in spite of our best intentions and we should thank Him for it.

I have to disagree – Iraq is today dismembered into three feuding parts, led by people who can’t stand each other and would as soon kill each other as they can’t live together.

If they can’t live in peace together, that’s not our fault and I prefer a weak Iraq to a strong one. That’s not what President Bush and his pro-Islamist enablers wanted but I’m not too upset over the final result.

A decade later, Iraq not only can’t make nuclear weapons, it can’t export terrorism abroad or threaten its neighbors. If only we had taken down Iran at the same time, it would have been all worth it. We should have removed not one but two nutjob regimes and let Allah sort it out between them.

We’re too exhausted to be the world’s policeman. I’m not advocating another war. We should actively work to to subvert Iran so it becomes like Iraq.

I want our enemies to kill each other, I never want to see it and I hope they lose. We can’t expect them to ever be civilized but we can stop making a bad problem worst.

Putting Islamist regimes in power throughout the Middle East is exactly that and in that respect both Bush and Obama have opened a Pandora’s Box that should have remained closed. The first rule of Machiavelli is don’t help your enemies, stupid.

Look how well things worked out in Libya because we did that and ended up with Benghazi. When will we ever learn?

Actually with the advanced technology we have, militarily, we could eliminate the rabbit holes quite well. Dealing with the unchecked immigration of the scum to our own backyard would be our only looming problem. It’s pretty bad right about now. Especially with our own peeps handing our weapons to cartels and brotherhoods.

If you’re offended by the $$ Cheney made W/Haliburton, I hope you’re stomping holes in your floor like an irascible and sanctimonious Rumplestiltskin when it comes to GEORGE SOROS and all the BILLIONS he makes off dirt-poor countries betting against their monetary systems.

If you’re agro @ Dick Cheney you should have spontaneously combusted by now regarding Soros, you grotty, hypocrite fraud.

It’s specious for you to compare the Chaney/Haliburton controversy to scumbag George Soros.

The Chaney/Haliburton Iraq war situation is apples to Soros orange financial dealings, which have nothing to with US military policy.

The subtopic was the debate about Haliburton’s financial involvement in the war and what role if any Chaney played in it. Obviously, anti Iraq war people, especially on the left who dislike Chaney accuse him of war-mongering to help Haliburton.

Scott, I love how you try to make yourself seem sooooo knowledgeable but step into a steamin’ pile of crap EVERYTIME because you don’t know that the f*** you are talking about (or can even follow an elementary comparison).

I was NOT conflating Halliburton with Soros. DUH!! I was comparing the retarded and tired (and mentally ill) outrage of Libtard Lee regarding Dick Cheney WITH his lack of outrage (or even knowledge) with all the evils George Soros has done…hurting more people and gaining heaps more money than DC.

If one is going to be a sanctimonious Libtard they should at least *TRY* to be intellectually honest. If you’re gonna paint Dick Cheney as evil and be all shirty about his Millions you should at least be even more agro with the BILLIONS Soros has made and the millions of people’s misfortunes he’s built his wealth on.

If you wanna showboat, at least be able to understand an elementary compare and contrast, know-nothing attention seeker.

Debbie, I agree with you up to a point, Ip think we should have not gone to war not realizing the full implications and i understand anybody can Monday morning quarterback. The initial selling point was that the Iraqis would be grateful to be rid of this Saddam Hussein. However, seeing that much of that region, like Tunisia, Egypt, etc. these people are not ready for democratic rule like in the West. Had our government officials had good human intelligence on the ground who can accurately say to us that getting rid one rat just to put another rat into power, maybe this war would not have started. I think the spectre of getting Saddam at all costs and some dubious to say the least Iraqi politicians that wanted to be in power the removal of Saddam got us involved in a war that we still do not know the full consequences unril years to come.

The liberals claimed that this was “a war for oil,” and the worst thing about the claim is that it wasn’t. After WE toppled Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi government gave the oil contracts to RUSSIA and CHINA, along with contracts to TOTAL SA (a major French oil company).

Mineral rights in Afghanistan are being given to the Chinese (which is why the Chinese are now playing a little nicer with their 60 million Muslims).

Americans are not colonial annexationists anymore. We acquired Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines in “splendid little wars.”

Then America was an emerging superpower. Today we’re no longer one and I have to laugh at people who claim we want to run the world. I wish we really did. It would be a much nicer and more peaceful place!

On the Twitters the wisenheimer known as the TweetOfGod (Libtard, but funny at times) tweeted about the 10th anniversary of the war and made the Libtard mistake you highlighted.

I had to respond to “God” that Obama-Putin put the kibosh on drilling and refineries (didn’t have enough characters to go on about the price of gas!!!) and that we are NOT swimming in Iragi oil. Can’t get between a dopey Libtard and their trusty lies they refuse to throw away like the worst of hoarders (Ain’t that right, Libtard Lee????).

Hmmmm. “God” didn’t seem to know US gets most of it’s oil from Venezuela, Canada and Gulf Of Mexico.

10 years after these f**king fools are still spewing the same garbage.

Yup. Iraq was an experiment that went wrong. Like I said, I don’t shed any tears its fallen apart but what I do oppose is our exporting democracy to the rest of the Arab World. If you make a mess, the one thing you don’t do is assume that repeating it elsewhere will things better.

Now we’re openly supporting and arming our would be Islamist enemies throughout the Middle East. Iraq is one thing but overthrowing pro-American dictators like Mubarak and Qaddafi was beyond stupid. Its for that and not for Iraq, that we’ll be paying the price for a long time to come.

Well we won the war but lost the peace, the political bungling that went on after brave service men and women put their lives on the line for a victory is inexcusable. They did their job but the politicians blew it trying to create some kind of Weimar republic.
Totally agree with Debbie on that score.

Of course it was much more difficult for them to do anything useful with so much public opposition.
If you fight this kind of war then victory is the only option but unfortunately not enough people understood that going in and even fewer understand it now.

And to go back ever further in history, let’s include GB I’s error in letting Saddam remain in power when beaten. I believe this was done by that geopolitical genius, Colin Powell. Overwhelming force, a win on the field, let’s quit because it’s too nasty to kill the Republican Guard.

Spot on. Whenever I see Colin Powell described as a successful example of affirmative action, I’m always stunned. Powell was the girly man that thought the iraquis would just fight us hard like nobody else ever did, with all their Iran war experience. The other naive general Schwartzy, he also blew the peace with the terms. Iraq would’ve been better off flattened and uninhabitable.

In my opinion the last “good war” was World War II, a war we had to fight. Too many brave men and women were killed or injured in subsequent wars. There may be times America must fight and at that time we need strong leadership and a limited action that identifies the enemy, strikes hard and fast and moves out.
The naive diplomacy of the last administrations has left the Middle East in chaos and instability. The dictators at least provided stability. As Debbie said “better the devil we know that the devil we don’t”.

@Barry,
MI6 and the CIA are told many things by sources like “Naji Sabri, Saddam’s foreign minister”.
That’s not news unless you’re the kind of dunce that reads the Guardian.
Now we know how Saddam was able to stay in power so long.

It really was not worth it. The War in Iraq merely empowered jihadis. When you attack a country in which the entire population is your avowed enemy, you just blast what you need to blast, and then leave. There should be no aid or assistance of any sort. Let the ruins smolder and the population take in the lesson. They should feel that they have been subdued. Why bail out Islam?

Seems to me that most of the Nazi ass kicking was done by the Red Army.

BTW–Please explain how FDR’s bellicosity can be viewed in isolation from his domestic policy. And, if I am a “Nazi” because I think our entrance into WW2 was a bad idea, is FDR a Nazi also because he didn’t care at all about the fate of the Jews?

Not sure how this is “disingenuous.” FDR was told many times about the plight of Jews in the camps, and did….nothing. Certainly, you can argue that once the Nazis were defeated, the camps were liberated, but please.

How about his turning away the St. Louis?

As to Churchill, he had better intel than FDR about the camps, and did…nothing, either. Regarding how he felt about the Jews, you can research this yourself, and you will see that his anti-Semitic writings before WW2 are still being discussed, and rationalized.

I don’t get paid enough for my postings here to teach you history.

As to Pat Buchanan, he does seem to tend toward anti-Semitism, but his comments on our entrance into WW2 are certainly not original to him.

Finally, you ask how the Jews would have fared absent out entry into the war. Loaded question. Stalin would still have defeated the Germans–maybe even faster, since he would not have had us on the team to restrain him. As it is, he had no problem losing 20 million of his own, even under our limited restraints.

The only advantage of the US being in the war is that we actually did liberate the camps, and save some people, while Stalin would likely have just killed or starved out the rest.

Arguably, we condemned more people than we saved, if you consider Operation Keelhaul.

The US entry in the war that made the world safe for communism slowed down Stalin? Well gee, you should be sorry we didn’t enter the war sooner, because maybe we could have kept Stalin out of Eastern Europe.

The US didn’t liberate THE camps, we liberated camps in Western Europe. The camps in the East were liberated by the Soviets. Stalin, monster that he was didn’t slaughter the Holocaust survivors in the East.

Stalin uses butchery when he felt in was in his best interests to use it. So it would have had to have somehow been in his best interests to slaughter hundreds of thousands or even millions of skeletal Holocaust survivors that he captured from the Nazis in your “scenario”.

Scott on March 20, 2013 at 10:12 pm

You always make me laugh Ridey.
Almost as much as when you said…
I’ll paraphrase, “We are in no position to launch a crusade against the Muslims, so let’s be friends…”

Personally I believe the WMDs were there. But suppose they weren’t. Saddam was refusing to allow proper inspections, and that in itself was reason enough to resume the war against him. The endgame of the First Gulf War spared Saddam on the understanding not just that the USA wouldn’t catch him building WMDs but that he would provide the transparency to show clearly he wasn’t building them. If the fellow violates a promise that was an integral part of the end of the war, and the war isn’t resumed, then there’s no point extracting such promises in the future. And thus no way to end a war in a fashion that leaves the losing army anything but completely flattened.

The wars in both Afghanistan and Iraq were just wars, but the execution was so pathetic that it might as well have just not happened. The war should have been just leveling the place, and no boots on the ground to get maimed later.

Let’s take each of the wars. In Afghanistan, the first – and BIGGEST mistake that the Bush Admin made – was to assume that Pakistan was an ally. They were anything but! Following 9/11, sensing the American mood of fury, Pakistan, which despite all that fanaticism, was cowardly enough to sell the Taliban up a river, having backed them all those years since Benazir Bhutto (who suddenly discovered that she was anti-Taliban). There was already a sanctions regime in place against Pakistan due to their nuke tests in 1998, and there was no reason to relax any of that. Instead, the US should have carpet bombed not just Kandahar, Kabul, Jalalalalabad, Tora Bora but also done the same to Peshawar, Islamabad, Karachi, Lahore and other major Paki cities. Remember, each of the major al Qaeda leaders captured were captured not in Afghanistan nor even in Pakistan’s ‘Wild West’, but in their main population centers – Karachi, Faizalabad and Rawalpindi, and Osama himself was discovered not in a cave near the Khyber Pass, but rather, in a government mansion in Abbottabad. So the idea that Pakistan was an ally was a lie since day one, a lie that the Bush Administration happily participated in. Had they leveled Pakistan, that country wouldn’t remain a nuclear power today, and the nightmare of Jihadis w/ nukes would remain just on paper.

Similarly, in Iraq, it took the Bush administration like forever to decide to ultimately move against Saddam. Here, I do disagree w/ Debbie somewhat about Shiites being worse than Sunnites: she herself doesn’t believe that in Syria, or else, she too would have been supporting the Syrian Sunni rebels, who she correctly recognizes as being as barbaric as their Shia enemies. The point here was that Saddam was useful during the 8-year war w/ Iran, but he was no longer doing that since 1990, so his main utility was being a backer of terrorists, like Abu Nidal, who was killed in Baghdad just before the invasion, and a financier of suicide bombers in Israel.

In Iraq, the right policy would have been to destroy Iraq’s military totally, level Baghdad and leave. Send UN inspectors in after that to hunt for WMDs, but stay out of not just the nation building, but the government forming process. In both Afghanistan and Iraq, the mistake was made of getting involved in forming a government. Instead, Iraq, Afghanistan – and Pakistan – should have been reduced to becoming a Somalia, which could be raided anytime anything got out of hand. And if Iran tried interfering, level them as well.

But installing governments was a mistake. Both countries adapted constitutions that declared Islam as being central to the laws that were adapted. That’s why Afghanistan almost put to death an apostate from Islam, and it was only an international outcry that enabled him to leave for Italy. Iraq now has an Islamic government, and the result is Christians fleeing not just to the US, but to Assad’s Syria – from whence they’d have to flee to Lebanon as the Islamic rebels reach Damascus.

I would say that there is one silver lining to all of this. True, a Shia crescent got created from Teheran through Baghdad, Damascus and ultimately to Beirut. But the same game of ‘democracy’ that destroyed Iraq’s Sunni regime of Saddam is now responsible for plunging Syria into a civil war. A war that hopefully gets as many Shia & Sunni Jihadis from all sorts of places – Lebanon, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Libya, Qatar, Tunisia, Jordan, PA, Yemen and so on. During the war, one famous quote of Bush was that ‘we want to fight them there so that we don’t have to fight them here’. The better idea is that the Muslims be the ones exclusively doing the fighting, and that’s what’s happening in Syria. While the instincts of the US and a good part of NATO threatens to destroy the Syrian regime and end the war, here ironically, Russian and Chinese support to Syria (for purely mercenary reasons) have seen to it that the war has no sign of ending, and that given enough time, enough Shia and Sunnis should be able to kill each other.

So yeah, neither war was worth it, and what’s worse – as a result of those boots on the ground adventures, nobody in the West has the stomach for a war against Iran while they work on their nuclear program. Ironically, Bill Clinton, who was much pilloried for the way he conducted his war against Serbia (for the wrong reasons), did it the right way – he just used air power, and nothing more. That’s the way it should have been done in Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran. (Incidentally, I disagreed w/ Clinton making an enemy of Serbia, since they had done nothing to earn it, while Bosnia and Kosovo haven’t exactly been grateful to the US for its support. While Clinton conducted the war the right way, he picked the wrong enemy – one that wasn’t one)

Infidel, your analysis is brilliant, but somewhere
you have to include the treachery and imperialism
of Saudi Arabia.
Invading Iraq had their full support and removed a
threat in Hussein only equaled by Bin Ladin. Now they
support al-queda in Syria which defines their ambitions.
Bin laden was great for the House of Saud.
Al-queda and Saudi Arabia are the same and they
are in it to win. They will sponsor the attack on Iran
and BO is selling that to Israel.

Infidel, what you have to realize with Serbia, Croatia, Kosovo, and Bosnia is the fighters were muslims. The people fighting against the muslims came to the realization that there was no breaking their will to fight and the only way to stop them was to kill them. They cried genocide and got Clinton to come to the aid of the muslims, wrong frigging side to aid. Now the frigging muslims have a stronger foothold in the area. Nothing was done right then. Clinton stupidly helped further the islamists cause. We definitely should have stayed out of that.

What a well-written piece summing up the last ten years in Iraq. Debbie covers all the bases here describing how poorly the aftermath of our removal of Saddam was.

We didn’t really need a crystal ball to see that throwing open the political process to the Iraqi people in the hope that they’d bring in some form of free government who could provide a sense of stability to this part of the Arab world, and perhaps be a friend in the region to israel would a total waste of our time, money, and lives.

Total waste of time, blood, and treasure. There were WMD’s, but we could’ve bombed them until nothing lived. Same with trashcanistan. We’re wasting more good men looking for IED’s by getting body parts blown off than anyone can imagine. It’s a collusion of the media and the elites to thin the herd of patriots ignorant enough to volunteer for the substandard treatment of our military. Look how incompetent the paper pushers were that got the 7 Marines killed in a stupid live fire exercise. Also for nothing. Our Air Force could take care of the whole thing, in short order. Maybe someday.

Thanks Debbie for calling it like you see it, despite conservative drones repeating the party line. Liberal or conservative, it is undeniable that Iraq is a much more dangerous place for doctors, engineers, professionals, secularists, Christians, and non-observant Muslims today than under Sadamm. So, the very people we would have hoped to work with are fleeing or have fled. Now Iraq is an unstable and traumatized country led by the latest Arab dictator.

Attention to all those who believe there were WMD: wake the hell up! The evidence was dismissed by most intelligence agencies prior to the war then subsequently regurgitated so many times that eventually people in power swallowed it. Hook….line….and sinker. EXACTLY what Shiites wanted, and championed by the ultimate con man, Ahmed Chalabi. The people searching for the WMD were not stupid, or fooled, or duped, nor did they believe there were ever WMD spirited to Syria. They concluded that the deception program Sadamm put together to give the appearance of WMDs was aimed towards Iran. Get past it, Bush and Cheney believed this evidence because they wanted it to be true and George Tenet is an idiot.

Incredibly sad, but after trillions and thousands of lives, we are worse off than ten years ago. Truly sad.

Commander Zero, I consider the ‘alliance’ with Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait and Emirates in the same vein that I consider the ‘alliance’ with Pakistan. The US may consider these countries allies, but they don’t consider the US as such.

The only thing I wonder is – who does Obama favor more – the Shias or the Sunnis? On one hand, his clandestine warming up to Iran seems to indicate the former, but his support to the Saudis, Turks and Qatar against the Assad regime seems to indicate the latter. Not that the GOP has different policies any more. Hopefully, the Russo-Chinese coalition will keep the West from doing much more there, just like the Russians recently threatened to expose the Saudis on Syria unless they stopped interfering.

I think that the war in Syria is the only reason that Egypt hasn’t totally annulled the 1979 agreement and attacked Israel so far.

You are spot on, Debbie. I was never for the invasion. I never thought we had exhausted all options to avoid an invasion. This was the rhetoric Bush preached to get Congress to vote. Saddam’s refusal to leave was probably calculated in the invasion plan. I hope we get a tell all book one day from someone in the cabinet.

Ladies and Gentlemen: hindsight, for all intents and purposes, will always be 20/20.

No amount of autopsies and analyses will provide a satisfactory answer to the question of what we have “achieved” in Iraq, Afghan, Pak, etc.

I used to support a decisive victory over evil in these 2 places. In the end, though, all we did was kill thousands of martyrdom-drunk meat-puppets, an over-glorified moneybag/pseudo-philanthropist and a nutbar tinpot dictator who used to be the West’s fair-weather friend in the region.

Not only that, but these recent exercises proved that true, inspirational, rational leadership is dead in our generation.

I am not saying that Roosevelt and Churchill (and to some extent Mackenzie-King) were examples of that type of leadership. Had it been the case, the US would’ve been fighting in 1939. In fact, for all their savagery, if it weren’t for Stalin’s Soviets, either the war would’ve dragged on or Hitler would’ve emerged somewhat victorious.

One can say that war is the product of greed, bigotry, paranoia and immaturity. These recent wars turned out to be botched because of all these factors. We wanted revenge: we got it. We wanted to get rid of people we didn’t like: we did it.

But what the USA (and by extension, the secular/X-tian “West”) eventually got was more enemies, less respect and an empowered Islamic Imperial Industrial Complex. It would’ve been better to work out a comprehensive and clear strategy before diving into the powder-keg called the Middle-East. But, as primates, we managed to let our emotions get in the way of our pursuit of justice.

If you want to find out the root causes of our failure to at least contain the strain of Islamo-Imperialism, you might as well go all they back to the Crusades. Had there been any leadership back then, we wouldn’t be discussing this today, would we?

I suppose that Euro anti-Semitism goes back to the Romans, but–as you recall–they weren’t too keen on Christians either, for awhile.

Still–the current upswing in Euro anti-semitism, and the growth of Islam now both stem from the decline of the Church in Europe. As it is, the really virulent Euro anti-Semitism derives from the Reformation and Luther—but who’s keeping score at this point?

I was in Iraq in 1997 . When Bush was making his tilt at the white house towards the end of that Decade i was having coffee with an Iranian businessman and we were discussing him. it seemed as though America was in deep trouble, the economy was running on theory and no substance. An elder fellow with us said one simple thing..” if George bush is elected America will invade either Iran Or Iraq “.
I was in Australia by the time the world trade center was attacked (for the second time) and the first thought that came to me was “War has come”.
I knew what was coming for me. Shake downs at every airport,ID requests from every jumped up security guard I walked past and so on. Those of us with a middle eastern appearance cop it all the time,yemulka and all.
Within days it was being announced that Bin Laden was responsible and that he was In Iraq. The world had been warned of Bin Laden for years but only the Americans ignored those warnings despite the ist World trade center attack .
I knew also ,having been to the Country, that no weapons of mass destruction would be found. It was all an illusion created by Both Saddaam and the various countries who sold him weaponry.
The country had fought a 5 year war with Iran so there were guns and heavy weapons of the smaller variety everywhere and from those observations I knew that any attack would be repulsed.
I was not surprised by the war cries of the Americans, whipped by Bush with choreography stolen from the Nazi newsreels.
But Rumsfelds statements saying he could overrun this country of sand and arabs with a small force in a blitzkrieg was doomed to fail,and fail it has.
Go back a thousand years and the same lies were being peddled by the Crusaders and they failed spectacularly too.
The invading forces were met by a people who are very experienced with war. Many Millions perished in the iran /Iraq war and many millions knew how to work a gun in a conflict.
The real reason for the invasion was oil, Bin Laden was found to be in Phakistan ( a crazy insane place!! )So as shown so graphically in all wars Debbie, truth is always the first casualty. In this war,the American economy has become the 2nd casualty,badly wounded with a long recovery ahead.

One more thing, Rumsfeld,on the eve of the invasion ( or a week or two before it) was being interviewed by Jim Lehrer on his news show. One question and one question only strikes me as being the very essence of the whole iraq disaster ..
from my memory so the words are not exact.
JL; Mr Rumsfeld, what will happen if the Iraqi people do not welcome you with open arms but fight back?”
Rumsfeld ; ” Jim!, How could you ask such a question! of course they will welcome us!.”

This question has been forgotten in the last ten years by the American public,if they even heard it being asked but I remember it vividly ,because as I said above,I knew war was coming, sometimes old age and experience is a curse .

Way too much wrong here to comment fully. You accuse my of not caring about Jews—based on what, exactly?

As to Stalin only using butchery when it suited his needs, I guess it suited his needs quite often, and made no sense at all much of the time, such as the forced starvation of millions.

The world was made safe for Communism primarily because WW2 was prosecuted on the US’ part by Stalin’s buddy FDR. In any event, we had no dog in that fight, other than Pearl, which was not only known in advance, but was pushed by US policy—since FDR desperately wanted to get into the war. No serious historian doubts this now.

Good grief, that absurd war started because a big bad dictator invaded Poland, and ended with a different big bad dictator taking over Poland.

As to Churchill, you might consider…

1. Churchill in 1922 excised Transjordan from Palestine, thus denying to Zionism more than half of the territory earmarked for the Jewish National Home.

2. If Churchill was such a good friend to the Jews, why did the restrictive provisions of the 1939 White Paper, which limited Jewish immigration into Palestine to 15,000 annually for the period 1939-1944 after which any further immigration would be dependent on Arab approval, remain in force under his leadership?

3. Since the failure of the RAF to bomb Auschwitz and of the British Army to stop the farhud (pogrom) against the Jews in Baghdad in 1941 have been attributed respectively to the RAF and the British Foreign Office, are we to surmise that Churchill lacked control of his own government and armed forces?

Funny how the 1937 piece you found is always dragged out as a decoy or red herring to be debunked—while they forget about the rest.

Finally, while you are right that the Soviets did liberate Auschwitz, the historical record is quite silent as to the disposition of the few prisoners (around 7,000) who were set free.

In any event, this thread began because I questioned what the point was of the US entering WW2, and the only answer you seem to come up with is that we saved the Jews. Yeah…only 6 million were killed. That’s a home run for sure.

The good news is that the Euros won the booby prize with importing 20 million Muslims.

Of course, there were people who emerged as Auschwitz survivors. My point is that the Soviets kept a very tight lid on just what happened en masse to those they liberated, and locked up the facility basically until the Communist regime fell in Poland.

If we would’ve liberated Iraq back in the ’90’s or the people of Iraq would be strong freedom loving nation, right in the middle of dictator middle east alleyway.

Even though we did eventually invade Iraq i think its a shame that it was delayed so long, not nearly as much gained as couldve been gained. Unfortunately we never seem to fail to fall just short of a really great thing.

The Iraq war was just like the Viet Nam and Afghanistan wars. All these wars had done is get brave americans soldiers killed, made billions for the military-Industrial complex in this country and run un up our national debt.
We need to stay home and let other nations take care of their problems. We have enough of our own to worry about.
Clinton, Bush and now Obama are all War Moners of the worst kind.